In fairness to my employer, we always have a holiday party, at noon, and then everyone leaves early afterwards. And it's not like we do much beforehand either. So it's celebrating the holidays with our co-workers AND getting time off in one. And we get paid for it.

Also, depending on when Christmas falls, it always seems to be timed in such a way that it's effectively the last 'working' day before the holidays, and we get a day or two off to boot: Christmas is on a Tuesday this year, and our party is on a Thursday. No one will be in that Friday or Monday unless they really want to be, so it's a nice little bonus.

If office holiday parties didn't seem like they were organized by unemployed guidance counselors or kindergarten teachers, we might enjoy them more. Our office went with option C recently, which is the option where you spend no money on employees at all and wonder why they start leaving in droves.

basemetal:So, 95% of workers are ungrateful , entitled and lazy? Way to slam the workers of America, subbs.

Holiday parties cost a lot less than bonuses, and bosses know that. The last newspaper I worked at would just find the bar or restaurant that owed them the most at the end of the year and swap out a deal. It was always a great party, but it was certainly the cheap way out.

delsydsoftware:If office holiday parties didn't seem like they were organized by unemployed guidance counselors or kindergarten teachers, we might enjoy them more. Our office went with option C recently, which is the option where you spend no money on employees at all and wonder why they start leaving in droves.

If your office has former rave/party organizers among its technical or HR staff, it can work out pretty well. Rented halls, buffets, a live band maybe or else a DJ, and lots of booze. So that gets it up to the level of a wedding reception.

We have the shiattiest office parties ever. Like, legendarily bad. We pay for our own food, there's no alcohol, and we're expected to be back at our desks by 2:00 p.m. Nothing like watching stone-cold-sober civil servants do the macarena at lunch time. One year we had a magician going table-to-table doing tricks with elastic bands. He kept trying to guess which card we'd chosen, and failing. After four wrong attempts we just asked him to go. Then the fat girl in HR sings carols.

Another year, we had to make nativity scenes out of the food and centrepieces on our table. I carved a baby Jesus out of a butter pat and hollowed out a bread roll for his manger. Again, sober.

A friend of mine's office is doing an HR "fun training session" plus a potluck.

I swear to god, I don't know what I'd do without the scotch in my desk drawer.

vartian:Holiday parties cost a lot less than bonuses, and bosses know that. The last newspaper I worked at would just find the bar or restaurant that owed them the most at the end of the year and swap out a deal. It was always a great party, but it was certainly the cheap way out.

My wife's company always has a blow out. Great food, ok music and the company is large enough that everyone has a small group of people they actually like.

Generation_D:delsydsoftware: If office holiday parties didn't seem like they were organized by unemployed guidance counselors or kindergarten teachers, we might enjoy them more. Our office went with option C recently, which is the option where you spend no money on employees at all and wonder why they start leaving in droves.

If your office has former rave/party organizers among its technical or HR staff, a budget it can work out pretty well. Rented halls, buffets, a live band maybe or else a DJ, and lots of booze. So that gets it up to the level of a wedding reception.

What you mentioned is nice, but I suspect in places like subby is thinking about, the problem isn't talent or willingness, but tight-fisted management.

God Is My Co-Pirate:We have the shiattiest office parties ever. Like, legendarily bad. We pay for our own food, there's no alcohol, and we're expected to be back at our desks by 2:00 p.m. Nothing like watching stone-cold-sober civil servants do the macarena at lunch time. One year we had a magician going table-to-table doing tricks with elastic bands. He kept trying to guess which card we'd chosen, and failing. After four wrong attempts we just asked him to go. Then the fat girl in HR sings carols.

Another year, we had to make nativity scenes out of the food and centrepieces on our table. I carved a baby Jesus out of a butter pat and hollowed out a bread roll for his manger. Again, sober.

A friend of mine's office is doing an HR "fun training session" plus a potluck.

I swear to god, I don't know what I'd do without the scotch in my desk drawer.

Good lord, its like an episode of The Office, where everyone's like Toby.

My department does a Christmas party that usually ends around 5am- potluck food and plenty of booze, usually is quite a good time.

The only part I dislike is people are invited to showcase a talent while at the party. This is super fun when it's a guy strumming along singalongs on his guitar, absolute murder when a senior professor is spending 40 minutes going through his piano composition.

God Is My Co-Pirate:We have the shiattiest office parties ever. Like, legendarily bad. We pay for our own food, there's no alcohol, and we're expected to be back at our desks by 2:00 p.m. Nothing like watching stone-cold-sober civil servants do the macarena at lunch time. One year we had a magician going table-to-table doing tricks with elastic bands. He kept trying to guess which card we'd chosen, and failing. After four wrong attempts we just asked him to go. Then the fat girl in HR sings carols.

Another year, we had to make nativity scenes out of the food and centrepieces on our table. I carved a baby Jesus out of a butter pat and hollowed out a bread roll for his manger. Again, sober.

A friend of mine's office is doing an HR "fun training session" plus a potluck.

I swear to god, I don't know what I'd do without the scotch in my desk drawer.

whistleridge:Generation_D: delsydsoftware: If office holiday parties didn't seem like they were organized by unemployed guidance counselors or kindergarten teachers, we might enjoy them more. Our office went with option C recently, which is the option where you spend no money on employees at all and wonder why they start leaving in droves.

If your office has former rave/party organizers among its technical or HR staff, a budget it can work out pretty well. Rented halls, buffets, a live band maybe or else a DJ, and lots of booze. So that gets it up to the level of a wedding reception.

What you mentioned is nice, but I suspect in places like subby is thinking about, the problem isn't talent or willingness, but tight-fisted management.

Well, I'll go one more, what you must have in addition to budget is morale. If your employees hate the workplace and work is always stressed, no amount of treats at the year-end party is going to change anything. More like they'll just stuff their pockets and leave first chance they get.

I see inside of a few companies a year now, and I have seen the occasional decorated workspace. Its definitely a marker for employee morale how much participation is occurring and discernable fun is being had in the ramp up to halloween or the holidays.

I've been at the same job for a long time and there's never been a work-sponsored holiday party of any kind. The best we can do is have some of the secretaries around the buildings sent out invitations to bring a dish for a potluck. And if anyone even thought about bringing any alcohol to one, they'd be fired before they got in the building.

My office's "holiday party" consists of a free lunch at a restaurant and the rest of the day off. Alcohol isn't free, but you can buy it. I don't exactly look forward to it, but all in all I can't complain.

kid_icarus:100% of me never goes to the Xmas party. I hate seeing coworkers in a social setting.

This X about eleventy billion. I have no idea how to interact with these people except in terms of the job. A lot of them are really touchy about some issues, and more than a couple of them I know keep little mental lists of "stuff" on other faculty members. I'd rather be seen as a bit of a standoffish kind of fellow than someone who is too forthcoming about their personal life.

This probably puts me on some kind of "spectrum" or other. I prefer to think of myself as simply antisocial.

Our company holiday is always on a Friday, at 6pm, at some restaurant in the middle of goddamn nowhere. There's free alcohol, but anyone above grunt level always seems to want to direct the conversation back toward work things. I went the first two years I was here, but never again.

The only good thing about it is people start leaving at 3 to take care of kids etc before heading over. So at least I get to go home early.

The holiday party my employer threw last year was massively over the top. ~45 people in the company, only 50 in total (including SO's) showed up. They could have cut $800-$1000 bonus checks to us and it would have cost less than this party. Such a waste.

I really hate mine. I get to see co-workers all day, every day, for 240+ days per year. The last thing I want to do is have them invade more of my time. If it was a choice between holiday party and nothing, I choose nothing. But you are obligated to go.

God Is My Co-Pirate:We have the shiattiest office parties ever. Like, legendarily bad. We pay for our own food, there's no alcohol, and we're expected to be back at our desks by 2:00 p.m. Nothing like watching stone-cold-sober civil servants do the macarena at lunch time. One year we had a magician going table-to-table doing tricks with elastic bands. He kept trying to guess which card we'd chosen, and failing. After four wrong attempts we just asked him to go. Then the fat girl in HR sings carols.

Another year, we had to make nativity scenes out of the food and centrepieces on our table. I carved a baby Jesus out of a butter pat and hollowed out a bread roll for his manger. Again, sober.

A friend of mine's office is doing an HR "fun training session" plus a potluck.

I swear to god, I don't know what I'd do without the scotch in my desk drawer.

Our holiday party this year includes salsa dancing lessons. It's being held at work and the flyers point out in bold that spouses are *not* invited (same as last year). I'm not sure there will be enough alcohol on hand to even make me consider dancing with co-workers. Mad Men, we ain't.

In related news, wanting to simply be compensated for your work based on the time you spend doing that work instead of forced to engage in banal conversation with people you don't really like just because of the date on the calendar makes you "ungrateful, entitled and lazy".

Now that you're ass manager, do you no longer have to wear the pirate outfit?

They buy us lunch at a decent steakhouse and we go back to the office for quick white elephant gift exchange, putz around a bit and go home early. We also get our usual Christmas bonus of around $500 at the same time. It's not much but we're happy to have jobs. The architecture field is a shadow of itself these days.

A party for the end of the world 12-21-12 Mayan Calender theme sound way more fun than the usual holiday party. Too bad it's a one-time event (non-event) as it's cost prohibitive to create single-use costumes. But there's always the fallback possibilities of booze and chicks, so my party trumps yours. Ho ho ho!

whistleridge:In fairness to my employer, we always have a holiday party, at noon, and then everyone leaves early afterwards. And it's not like we do much beforehand either. So it's celebrating the holidays with our co-workers AND getting time off in one. And we get paid for it.

Also, depending on when Christmas falls, it always seems to be timed in such a way that it's effectively the last 'working' day before the holidays, and we get a day or two off to boot: Christmas is on a Tuesday this year, and our party is on a Thursday. No one will be in that Friday or Monday unless they really want to be, so it's a nice little bonus.

Our holiday party is over lunch and since I plan to go back to work afterwards I don't get to drink. I'm a department head in a manufacturing plant with unionized employees. If I made anybody unhappy in the past few months (which is impossible NOT to do unless I stay home from work) I can expect them to file a grievance about me being at work with alcohol in me.

basemetal:So, 95% of workers are ungrateful , entitled and lazy? Way to slam the workers of America, subbs.

soapboxWell, let's face it... they are. They have no appreciation for the job they have, the training, time and effort the company puts into employees, and could care less about anyone other than themselves.

This debate is far more convoluted that just this, but let's face it: most (over 50%) of workers don't like their job, their boss, the company, or any combination thereof. I don't think all business owners are ethical, honest, or are beyond reproach either.

It is up to each employee to decide for themselves if they could be better off somewhere else, then go or stay. If the business treats its customers and employees like crap, leaving the company and going somewhere else is the ultimate revenge./soapbox

/I actually helped close down a business//Took me about a year///I lol'd for a week

My wife's company has a fairly good party. It's either at a nice hotel downtown, so you get a room, bring a few bottles of wine, pre-party to your heart's content and don't worry about getting trashed. Or, the last few years they've rented out the club level area at the Bronco's football stadium. Decent food, nice bar. Tours of the stadium going on. The person who plans the whole thing is the CEO's executive assistant and my wife and I hang out with her and her husband socially so drink tickets are never an issue. We spend some time there and then a few of us take off for downtown, continue to have a good time and then use the company provided cab vouchers to get home.